On Thursday 11th February we have seen Jeremy Hunt impose the new contract on junior doctors despite repeated protests by doctors and patients. While Mr Hunt has tried to portray Junior doctors as money grabbers reluctant to work weekends the truth is that over 53,000 doctors have struck over concerns to patient safety. (I must make sure that autocorrect doesn't replace the H with a C when I talk about Mr Hunt!) And for the record: I hate the term Junior Doctor, it implies that these are not 'real' or 'qualified' doctors. That they're a 23 year old fresh out of medical school that's yet to earn their stripes. They are infact any doctor that has yet to reach the lofty height of consultant status.
@HannahPopsy
@porcupinepaul
@georgesjuniors
As someone who has been treated by lots of junior doctors (now referred to as JD's to save me from having to keep typing it) and spent lots of time in hospital I have seen first hand how hard they work. When I was an in patient the JD's would start work at 7am and very rarely leave before 7pm. They would often work 6 days a week, sometimes 7. They would have a huge amount of responsibility and the decisions they took could quite literally be life or death situations. I often wondered how they had any time to have a life outside of the hospital. When did they have time to see their children, to go to sports days or parents evenings? When did they do the food shop or clean the house? Did they ever have the chance to go to the cinema or the pub? And how did they take their work home with them? Not literally (I'm pretty sure I never saw a JD stuff a patient into his briefcase in order to carry on treating them from the comfort of their living room!) but in terms of what they saw, what they did, what they didn't do?
I personally think that all Doctors, not just JD's, are worth their salary. I think they should be paid more as should our nurses. But the problem is that Jeremy Hunt is trying to treat the NHS as a business. It's trying to impose the sort of contract onto the JD's that I've seen used in retail- you must work the weekends, they're just a 'normal' working day, "extra pay for working Saturdays? You must be joking" that sort of thing. But the NHS isn't a business. It's a service that's free at the point of access for everyone. Doesn't mater if you're rich or poor, black or white, Christian or Muslim. It's something we treasure, part of our national identity, part of what makes us British. And my fear is that this is the thin end of the wedge, the start of a slippery slope into privatisation and a system similar to what you see in America. Yes, people have to work in the week and take time off for hospital appointments and yes, it would be great to have the option of seeing a doctor on the weekend for routine non emergency stuff but that will only work if there are more doctors to provide that service. You can't simply take the existing number of doctors and spread them out even thinner over a 7 day service. And let's not forget that the NHS is already open 7 days a week. Nobody has ever been turned away from A&E because they're shut on Sunday's or not been admitted to intensive care on a Saturday because the doctors don't work weekends. They do but it shouldn't be a normal working day. If you're not desperately ill you can wait until Monday. It's like when I've been in A&E and overheard people moaning about the 3 hour wait. I think to myself that if you're well enough to moan then you're well enough to wait.
I'm pretty sure if you asked most people would be willing to pay a penny or two more in tax if they knew it was going directly to the NHS. But a tax increase isn't good for political manifestos is it? So now the doctors in England will be on a completely different contract to doctors in Wales or Scotland. How crazy is that? How many of these demoralised, overworked JD's will be hopping over the border in search of a fairer contract? Will that be their first stop before they head for Europe or Australia?
JD's have been out on strike in an attempt to show the government and the public just how strongly they oppose this change in contract and on Twitter a series of tweets were made by JD's under the hashtag #IAmTheDoctorWho They've displayed pictures like the ones below showing their value to the NHS by saying that they're the doctor who looks after the elderly, performed heart surgery or looks after babies in the neonatal ward.
In response to the doctors posts of I Am The Doctor Who people began posting using the hashtag #IAmThePatientWho and described times JD's had helped them, looked after family members or simply to give JD's their thanks
And here's my Twitter post:
How can I ever say thank you to the doctors and nurses who looked after me, operated on me and brought me back from the brink of death? By standing shoulder to shoulder with them on this issue and defending their right to call Saturday a non working day. Because a day off is the least they deserve for what they give to our NHS. Streamlining and issuing new contacts might save money but the true cost is yet to be seen.
NB x
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